They Were Just Trying To Be Nice

Two pretty young women rolling a bright yellow cart stacked with thin, glossy paperback books and craft materials rattle up to me as I sit in the waiting room for my doctor’s appointment.

“Would you like to do an activity while you wait?” one of them, an asian woman with long black hair, asks. Her expression suggests that, while concerned in a friendly sort of way, she takes a certain pleasure in demonstrating her concern, but wouldn't want to show either her concern or pleasure in a way that was too obvious.

I’m polite, midwesternly so, and I smile, showing none of the rankling I feel at their (entirely inadvertent, and probably felt only by me) condescension in treating me like I’m some sort of child who needs to be entertained and distracted by crosswords or origami or macaroni art, and I just say “No thank you,” indicating the book I was reading before they walked up, and they smile back and nod and roll on, content and secure in their beneficent goodness.